Women Against Rape (WAR) is a grassroots multi-racial women’s group founded in 1976 and based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in London. WAR provides rights information, support and advocacy. It campaigns for justice, protection and compensation for all women and girls who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence. This includes survivors of any age, race and nationality, asylum seekers, women with disabilities, trans women, sex workers. WAR have won changes in the law such as making rape in marriage a crime, and have set legal precedents such as the first private prosecution for rape alongside ECP, after the authorities refused to bring a rapist of two sex workers to court. See WAR’s website here.
Policing & Crime Bill: Prostitution proposals detrimental to safetyAs measures on prostitution in the Policing and Crime Bill are discussed this week, we respectfully ask Members of the House of Lords to consider our arguments on women’s safety and why we oppose Clauses 16 (loitering), 17 (‘rehabilitation’) and 21 (closure orders), as well as Clause […]
Introduction and methodologyIn May 2009, the English Collective of Prostitutes and Women Against Rape conducted a survey of women working in the sex industry. We distributed a total of 125 questionnaires, mainly by women enthusiastically passing them onto friends and workmates, and received 77 replies (all women with one exception) – a remarkably high response rate of […]
Sandra Laville,It is 27 years since the documentary A Complaint of Rape caused an outcry and forced a sea change in the way police forces treat allegations of rape and sexual assault.The groundbreaking film showed a woman, who alleged she had been raped by three strangers, being bullied and cajoled by male police officers who dismissed […]
Tuesday 3 February 6pmCommittee Room 6 House of Commons While government feminists and religious fundamentalists equate prostitution with rape and claim most sex workers have been trafficked, rapists continue to get away with it – the conviction rate for reported rape in England and Wales is a shocking 6%. But a growing international movement […]
At the Million Women Rise march against violence on Saturday 8 March, a woman who was going to speak about sex workers’ safety was dropped from the platform at the last minute. Teresa MacKay from Ipswich Trades Council had been invited to address the rally in Trafalgar Square and had submitted in advance her speech […]
Government feminists and Christian fundamentalists have joined forces claiming that prostitution is violence. They rightly say that attacks against prostitute women are common and that it’s only when five are murdered in one place that it starts to provoke debate.They want to criminalise men who buy sex, as Sweden has done. But prosecuting clients is […]
Campaigning for justice in the 21st century Saturday 10 March 9.30-5pm Trinity Reformed Church, Buck Street, London NW1 (Kentish Town Road end, behind Sainsbury’s, Camden Town tube) Entrance: £20 funded organisations and professionals; £10 waged; £5 low waged; £3 unwaged; asylum seekers free. No one turned away for lack of funds. Wheelchair accessible (toilets nearby) All […]
Letters to the Editor The inquiry into ‘Camden Ripper’ Anthony Hardy, held in private, which exonerated the psychiatrists, did not go far enough into Hardy’s previous violence or the authorities’ responsibility for not prosecuting him earlier. Yet he was known to hate women, particularly prostitute women, had a history of extreme violence and hospital staff […]
On 12 March 1996 a woman from Bristol who was violently attacked, raped and robbed won £4,000 compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board (CICB.) The CICB had initially refused her compensation because she had convictions related to prostitution. Ms X was raped in July 1994. Despite knowing that the police and courts were likely […]
In 1995, two women brought the first successful private prosecution for rape in England and Wales with the support of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) and Women Against Rape (WAR). Both women had independently reported being attacked in what turned out to be remarkably similar circumstances. Yet the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was […]